In recent years, plastic merchandise bags of various types have largely supplanted paper bags in retail stores. Among the reasons for this development are the fact that plastic bags are cheaper, easier to handle, to ship and to store, and more easily recycled and may be readily provided in a plurality of different sizes and configurations which they may often desire to hand to the customer at the time of sale in a shopping bag of a size most suitable to encompass the particular item or items of merchandise.
Among the more popular types of plastic bags are what have been termed "T-shirt" style merchandising bags and various other configurations of bags known as "merchandise bags". These may be provided by plastic bag manufacturers, either in rolls, or in a series of interconnected bags blocked-on-headers or fused together in some other fashion, or in packs in which bags of identical size and configuration are placed one upon another and may be shipped to the retailer in boxes or plastic or other wrappings. The present invention involves the dispensing of the latter types of bag packages i.e., those not shipped to the retailer in rolls.
The T-shirt bag in the non-rolled shipped form comprises a pair of side panels which are connected along their side and bottom edges to define a cavity adapted to receive articles. Each side of the bag towards it upper area is provided with a pair of straps spaced apart from each other. The straps of the two sides of the panels are joined together along their upper edges and may be open along their side edges, thereby to form two separate handles with open spacing between them above the upper open edges of the bag. These upper edges are not closed except for a small center area where the two abutting edges are joined by a pair of detachable looped or slotted extensions, known as blocked headers or tabs. These headers are not only joined together, but they may be joined with the corresponding extensions of adjacent bags, thereby to enable packs of bags to be kept together for handling and mounting on some type of horizontally extending projection which may be passed through the registering loops or slots in the extensions of a bag pack. In this manner, these extensions provide a hook-receiving opening. Examples of such mountings are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,819,898; 4,840,335; 4,981,216; 4,995,860 and 5,020,750.
All configurations of non-rolled merchandise bags have a closed bottom and sides with an open top defined by edges extending between the sides. These bags may be manufactured to incorporate a hook-receiving opening at a predetermined location, either above or below the open top of the bags. These bags may be joined together by fusing them in a variety of ways, enabling packs of bags to be kept together for handling and mounting in some type of horizontally extending projection which may be passed through the hook-receiving opening of a bag pack.
Heretofore, as seen from the patents listed above, principal attention has been given primarily to providing a method and means for dispensing bags of a single size, such as those for groceries in supermarkets.
The supermarket racks and techniques, however, are not satisfactory for merchandisers of garments, cosmetics, footwear, household articles, personal items, etc. A retailer vending any variety of goods ordinarily desires to be able to deposit the customer's purchases in some type of convenient shopping bag--one which is appropriate in size to the size of the item purchased. This renders it desirable for a retailer's cashier checkout station to have available packs of a plurality of one or more sizes of bags. However, if each different size bag pack is separately and singly mounted for ripping off and removal by the cashier or other store clerk, not only will considerable space be required, but also it may be necessary for the clerk to waste time and energy moving about to reach the different bag packs. This is not only inconvenient, but may be fatiguing for the clerks. What is desirable, therefore, is some type of rack arrangement whereby a plurality of packs of different size bags may be mounted together for convenient removal by a clerk exerting a minimum of effort and movement in or about his or her work station. It is also desirable to provide a simple method and means for dispensing bags from a single sized pack.